VIENNA AGREEMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 October 1940, Page 5

VIENNA AGREEMENT

NOT REGARDED AS FINAL BY HUNGARY CONTINUED PRESSURE ON RUMANIA. EXPULSIONS AS REPRISALS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, October 6. The correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph” in the Balkans says relations between Hungary and Rumania show that the Vienna agreement transferring Rumanian territory was not a settlement at all. Big groups of Hungarians were left in Rumania, while Hungary absorbed vast areas populated by Rumanians. Moreover, Hungary has not intention of regarding the settlement as final. It seems to be dawning on countries which were hitherto persuaded that an Axis victory was a foregone conclusion, that after all there is a remote possibility of a British victory, and, also, that the Axis is not likely to have things all its own way when the time comes for making peace. A country like Hungary, therefore, has a natural tendency to "cash-in” as much as possible on the ground that “if the Axis wins we shall keep it, and if the Axis is defeated or weakened then the more we have the less we are likely to lose in proportion.” In Budapest it is .semi-officially stated that Rumania’s intransigency in the negotiations for the return of refugees compelled Hungary to take reprisals and expel certain Rumanians. “The expelled Rumanians,” says the statement, “are only a fraction of the number of Hungarians expelled from Rumania. If Rumania continues the expulsions Hungary will be compelled to take stronger reprisals.”